A Cash Machine in Stretford, Manchester, today made residents of Stretford with a cash card quite rich.
The ordinary looking ATM started handing out fifty times the amount requested due to a software glitch that many IT experts believe the ATM came up with itself.
One resident, who prefers to go under the name Barney Rubble (rather than his real name of John Gershwin, in case the bank read this and ask for the money back), extracted twelve and a half thousand pounds by asking for his full daily amount.
"Word got around Stretford very quickly," said Barney. "I got a phone call off my friend, Fred Flinstone, who'd heard it off his butcher, who'd been told by the window cleaner, who'd talked to somebody who'd got some money out. I immediately went down and took out two fifty, and it made me rich."
Harassed bank staff at the High Street branch of the Royal Bank of Wales could not understand why they were having to fill the machine every hour, nor why the queue stretched all the way down the road.
"From our side the ATM was saying nothing was wrong," said Leslie Love. "We thought there must be a sale on at Primark."
Gwyffd Jones, branch manager, is still trying to trace all the people who had extracted money. "It's going to be difficult," he said. "The ATM is refusing to tell us who it gave money to, so we have been forced to ask people coming out of Elizabeth Duke with big bags whether or not they were one of the lucky ones. As far as we can tell, nobody in Stretford has ever been to that cash machine."
